Archive for August, 2007
I recently found a fun reminder server - www.hassleme.co.uk
Go to their website, set up what you want to be reminded of, how often and they’ll send you an automatic email that looks something like this:
Hi,
This is a hassle to remind you to write a blog post!. So get to it!
- - - - - - -
You’ll be sent one of these hassles roughly every day.
If you don’t want to be hassled about this anymore, please click this
link:
http://hassleme.co.uk
Note: If you asked us to hassle you about other things, only this
particular hassle will be cancelled.
Thanks,
– The HassleMe Team
–
http://hassleme.co.uk/
And guess what - it worked! 
- catching up on my bloglines - great tool for keeping all your RSS feeds in one place. Just hit the ‘j’ key and it takes you to the next … #
- one final browse through my email before I sign off for the night #
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I’ve spent several hours looking through the various plugins for WordPress. In case you don’t know, these are little snippets you can add to your blog that will add some really cool features.
Here are the ones I selected.
1. Akismet - this comes pre-installed on WordPress, however you must register for an API key to unlock it. This plugin will grab most of the spam that comes to your blog and zap it without you having to do anything with it.
2. Hello Dolly - this one is also pre-installed and is just a fun tribute to the Louis Armstrong song, Hello Dolly. You won’t see any sign of this, as selected lines from the song show up in the Admin panel. Right now, the line is “You’re still goin’ strong”
3. Add graphical signature - this is great if you have a single signature to end all your posts with - it will automatically append that sig to your posts. I haven’t activated this plugin because I don’t have a signature set up yet.
4. Google Analyticator - this plugin automatically appends your Google Analytics code to each blog page. This way, you don’t have to go futzing with the blog code to add the Analytics code. Don’t have Google Analytics? Go get it! It will give you awesome information on the traffic your website/ blog gets.
5. Link to Me Textbox - This shows up on the interior/ single post pages of the blog. It gives you the link code if you want to link back to a particular blog post from your blog or website.
6. Snap Shots - this is a fun little plug in. It applies a little icon beside a website URL or another link within your post. When you place your mouse over the icon, a larger screen will pop up and you can see the page that is being referenced.
7. Sociable - this are the little icons that follow each post where you can Digg, or StumbleUpon or otherwise notify the “social” sites of a particular post. This helps drive traffic to your site that you might not otherwise receive.
8. Remind Subscribe - this is very cool and also follows each post. It’s a subtle reminder for the reader to join your RSS feed so they will receive all your blog posts.
9. Twitter Tools - The Twitter “Tweets” appear in the side bar and once a day post a ‘digest’ blog posts of the Tweets I have made during the day. The thought behind Twitter is that you make very short entries about what you are doing at various times during the day. My Twitter is hooked up to my blog and facebook account.
10. Finally, an email plugin that will allow people to forward your post as an email - either to themselves or friends. The only thing here is I haven’t been able to make this one work.
One more specific plugin I would like, but haven’t found, is a calendar icon with the current date for each post.
I’ve set up a blog for my husband as well, and found a nice First letter dropcap for his posts. This makes the first letter of his posts quite large and the remaining text wraps around it.
So there you have it - just a tiny portion of the pages and pages of plugins you can add.
Don’t have a blog yet? I can set one up for you! Contact me here: www.peggymurrah.com
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I’ve had this issue come up a couple of times over the past weeks with clients - what to do with your email account when you move your website to a new host? For whatever reason, a lot of you don’t use the ’standard’ Email clients like Outlook or AOL.
Here are my thoughts on the matter:
You really have three options here.
1. Just use the [new webhost] webmail – on the initial end, this is the easiest, BUT
if you ever decided to move to a different hosting account, your emails
would not port over easily. (Yes, they would all be stored at [webhost] )
2.
Set up your email in Outlook – if you have this already installed on
your computer, it’s a good way to go. The downside is, you would not
have access to your emails if you were away from your computer.
3.
Set up a Gmail or Yahoo account. This is almost the best of both
worlds. We can set it up where people would only see your
business.com email address (not gmail.com or yahoo.com), you can
access it from anywhere and should you ever change hosting companies,
your email would not be held hostage. This is also good if your
assistant monitors your email because she can just log into your
business account through gmail or yahoo and do whatever she needs to
do.
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- finding too many plugins for my new word press blog (moving over from typepad) - signing up for a www.snap.com acct now #
- wow- I’ve already got my first follower from twitter! do people just sit around and wait for new accts to sign up? #
- back at my computer for a few last minute tasks. working on moving another blog for a client #
- going through more wordpress plugins. this is as addicting as shoes! #
- back to work - it’s time to update some prices on a sales page and shopping cart, graphic tweaks for a client #
- It’s Sunday - I have a really hard time working on the weekend. #
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Well, after having a blog over at Typepad for almost a year (and rarely posting), I have set up a WordPress blog. This is what I recommend to all my clients.
It was a learning experience setting it up! The programmer I use for all my blog work is on holiday until the 20th, and I, being somewhat impatient, decided to try my hand and skinning a template and importing all my typepad posts. I’m happy with the way it turned out! I’ve spent most of the afternoon looking through the multitude of plugins to add…
So here it is - my first WordPress post. Now if I can just keep up the momentum…
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- signing up to twitter! #
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I’m currently going through Ed Dale’s Thirty Day Challenge
and we’re spending a lot of time on market research. Neglecting
appropriate market research is a mistake that many marketers (both
online and off) make. I’ve been guilty. Overlooking this can be costly,
both in time and money. Here’s a lesson waiting to be learned.
We recently returned from our vacation in the beautiful Caribbean. We selected a lesser-known island, St. Kitts, to spend our time as we wanted to stay away from all the tourist crowds of the more popular islands. It was lovely, the people are fantastic and we had a wonderful time. But that’s not what this post is about.
My husband loves to talk with the locals of wherever we visit so we can really get a feel for what life is like for them. Sitting at a beach bar one afternoon, he struck up a conversation with the bar owner and another man. Conversation turned to all the construction going on and it ended up to one particular development.
The locals were shaking their heads - one developer was building a multi-hundred-million dollar development on the island, overlooking a lovely bay on the Caribbean. What’s the problem with this? The land was untouched, overlooking a beautiful bay… it will a perfect place for high dollar real estate. Except… that particular bay is where the sharks breed.
That developer never bothered to find out what was swimming in his pond. By asking just a few questions, he could have easily found out what lurked in those waters.
A lot of people see a potential niche where nothing is going on and think they have discovered the next biggest market. I challenge you to explore a little further and find out WHY no one else is in that market. Maybe they know something you don’t - just like the locals on St. Kitts know where not to swim.
Technorati Tags: market research, St. Kitts,
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I just discovered a fun website that will tell you what your domain name is worth. I don’t know if the prices are realistic, but it’s a neat tool.
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